Dear Acera Community,
I am happy to announce that Heather Pinedo Burns accepted our offer to become Acera’s Associate Head of School for the 2024/25 School Year!
We are particularly excited about Heather for this position because of, first and foremost, her warmth and fit with our community, as well as her intellect, her experience in school leadership, her depth of knowledge in gifted education (she has taught courses on gifted education at Columbia University’s Teachers College), her belief in inquiry-rich and student responsive learning, and her communication style of humility, listening, and professionalism.
Heather is excited about Acera because of our focus on gifted education, on our uniquely strong emphasis on individualized pathways and high engagement, joyful learning within gifted ed, the warmth and welcome she and her family felt in their visits, the high caliber of our faculty, and her ability to contribute to Acera and all that is to come in our future!
Heather and her family say that they all felt the warmth from Acera throughout this process. So many people helped with this, including our Search Advisory group (representing faculty, trustee, parent and admin perspectives), our Board of Directors (who engaged in relational and responsive ways to help us recruit Heather), our internal team who invested time and care to customize her visit interviews and process, the many faculty who welcomed her so warmly with our open format lunch conversation and after school workshop session, and so many parents who participated in the parent Q&A session and the parent coffee, giving extra verve in our invitation for her to join our community.
Truly, it was an all-community effort to assess her candidacy and then recruit and welcome her and her family with open arms! Thank you everyone!
All the best,
Courtney
Courtney Dickinson is Acera’s Founder & Head of School.
